Antilochus, the Iliad's Mary Sue

Antilochus. Side A from an Attic red-figure neck-amphora, ca. 470 BC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oswald lists seven deaths that, in Homer, are given in 120 lines of hard fighting: Oinomaos, Askalaphos, Aphareus, Thoon, Antilochus, Deipuros, and Peisander.  Except one of these things is not like the others: Antilochus doesn't actually die here.  This is the second time she's killed Antilochus, quietly embedding him in a list of dead warriors,  when in fact Antilochus killed someone else in this passage (who isn't listed among the dead).  And here she's done it again: Adamas, son of Asios (who has just died), attacks Antilochus, but Poseidon likes Antilochus and saves him.  Adamas ducks in behind his friends but Meriones follows him and kills him particularly painfully (spear in the gut, midway between the navel and the privates, and he writhes around painfully until Meriones pulls out the spear and he dies).  Oswald skips all this and lists Antilochus among the dead.

The first time Oswald did this I thought it was a mistake, but this isn't a mistake.  Why does she keep killing off Antilochus?  He doesn't even die in the Iliad.  (He's killed later, by Memnon, or possibly by Paris at the same time as Achilles, or according to Hyginus Hector kills him, which would be a surprise to Homer, because Antilochus is still alive in the next book of the Iliad to put in a mediocre performance in the funeral games for Patroclus).  And everyone likes him, and he's Achilles' good buddy, and everyone likes his dad, and he's always up to fight some Trojans, bouncy and courageous and gay,  he is, in fact, the Mary Sue of the Iliad, the one that has puzzlingly been made way, way too likeable, as if Homer (or the entirety of the oral tradition really really liked him and thought the rest of us should too for no obvious reason.

But she keeps killing him off.  As if we should get in our mourning for Antilochus now, because he keeps being mentioned, but he doesn't get a proper death scene in the Iliad, but the fact is he is going to die before he makes it home, so let's mourn him in advance, as the only Greek warrior that everybody really likes, and she wants to remind us that he doesn't make it either?

Or, I don't know.  I wonder if Antilochus' inclusion in Memorial might be my way into writing about the poem.  It's odd in so many ways.  I could talk about the ways.

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Antilochus? Huh.

Antilochus. Side A from an Attic red-figure neck-amphora, ca. 470 BC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oswald is still working through Book 6, and gives us the list of Trojans each of whom is killed by a different Greek - Astyales, Pidutes, Aretaon, Antilochus, Elatus, Phylakos and Melanthius.   But which of these boys is not like the others?  Antilochus is Greek, and doesn't die here; we don't hear of his death until the Odyssey in fact.  Antilochus kills a Trojan, Ablerus, whose name his replaces.

And so I'm wondering if this is just a mistake - she missed the fact that Antilochus was in the nominative - but no; Antilochus is a major figure, everybody's best friend, well-regarded by all, major part in the funeral games for Patroclus 17 books from now, she knows he doesn't die here.  So, error? Or is she inserting Antilochus here as an illustration of her general theme, that the deaths of the great and the deaths of those whose names are only mentioned once, in a list, deaths on the winning and the losing team, are equally significant?

The simile comes originally from Iliad 10.1-10, where Agamemnon can't sleep, his mind is as disturbed as the sky when it's disturbed by lightning before a storm.  But here she's transferred it to the experience of the almost-nameless about-to-die Trojans; the victims are jolted awake (to the reality of their situation?) by the flash of a spear, as the "god keeps the night awake with lightning" before a storm.  Perhaps also significant here that Agamemnon kills one of them - Eletaon - in the company of many other Greeks, Odysseus, Antilochus, Teucer, Polypoites, each of whom kill one.  The Greeks are still functioning as a winning team, at this point; but Agamemnon (in the simile) is so worried that he can't sleep.

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Orsilochus, Krethon, Pylaemenes and Mydon

Patroclo e Menelao (Photo credit: loungerie)

Have got through the next bit.  Oswald gives the deaths of two pairs of fighters, Orsilochus and Krethon, two brothers from Greece, and Pylaemenes and his charioteer Mydon from Paphlagonia, so a pair on either side, in the order also found in Homer Bk 5.  There's information about Pylaemenes in the Catalog of Trojans (Bk 2) which she combines with his death scene in Bk 5, says "his heart was made of coarse cloth and his manners were loose like old sacking"; not sure where she's getting the second bit, but the description of his heart comes from 2. 851, "λάσιον κῆρ". The Catalog of Trojans also describes Paphlagonia as home to wild mules, which may suggest the simile she appends after the description of both deaths:

"Like two mules on a shaly path in the mountains/carrying a huge roof truss or the beam of a boat/go on mile after mile giving it their willingness/ until the effort breaks their strength".  (Oswald, Memorial, p. 24).

This simile comes from the description of Menelaus and Meriones carrying the body of Patroclos away from the battle, defending it and themselves from attacks, as the two Aias' hold off the Trojans:

Iliad 17.742-746
οἳ δ’ ὥς θ’ ἡμίονοι κρατερὸν μένος ἀμφιβαλόντες
ἕλκωσ’ ἐξ ὄρεος κατὰ παιπαλόεσσαν ἀταρπὸν
ἢ δοκὸν ἠὲ δόρυ μέγα νήϊον· ἐν δέ τε θυμὸς17.745τείρεθ’ ὁμοῦ καμάτῳ τε καὶ ἱδρῷ σπευδόντεσσιν·ὣς οἵ γ’ ἐμμεμαῶτε νέκυν φέρον

There are several reasons it has special resonance here though:

• attaching the simile from the death of Patroclos to the deaths of 4 fairly minor characters (3 w e never hear of anywhere else at all, and the 4th only once, in the Catalog) increases the gravity of the deaths of the minor characters
• at the death scene of Orsilochus and Crethon, Menelaus & Antilochus drag the bodies back to the Greek line, being menaced only by Aeneas, who killed them both.   In the death scene of Patroclos, Menelaus is on his own, since Antilochus is on the sidelines, held in reserve; but both Aeneas and Hector are leading the fight to claim Patroclos' body.  So in both cases Menelaus drags the bodies back (eventually) and Antilochus is involved; in both cases there is a further pair of fighters (Menelaus & Antilochus vs. Aeneas & Hector); so, a pair of mules again, redoubled.
• the mules recall the Paphlagonian mules from the Catalog
• Most importantly, I think: in that the simile gives us a pair of mules, and we have just heard of two pairs of dead warriors, the simile is transferred from the work of those carrying the body to the even greater work of those who actually died, "until the effort breaks their strength" (as opposed to the Greek, which simply has Menelaus & Meriones worn out with toil and streaming with sweat).  For Oswald, it's the sufferings and labours of the dead that matter, not the necessarily lesser sufferings of those who outlive them.

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